Family

Chilkat has approximately three consonants in her arsenal now. She got ‘m’ down first, followed quickly by ‘n’. Yesterday she got ‘b’, and shortly afterward learned how to blow spit bubbles…”bbbbbbbbbbb”. Her vowels all seem to be an amalgamation…which is rather ingenuous. She has invented the Multi-Purpose Amalgamated Vowel Sound (TM). We’re trying to get her to build sentences with these building blocks. We’re also trying to figure out how to get rich off this invention.

“Mom, name me Mimi.”

“My main man may mine my money!”

“I’m no baby!”

We welcome more suggestions.

She pointedly ignores me every day when I visit her in day care. She doesn’t hesitate to give big giant smiles to Kim the infant day care lady. Today, Chilkat took our suggestion to poop at day care since we’re paying them big bucks anyway. In fact, she took this suggestion twice. Kim the infant day care lady marvels at how strong she is, and how advanced she is, and has clearly figured out how to ingratiate herself with parents: Praise their children.

When I visit her at day care, she reminds me of an aloof intellectual in a prison. She doesn’t participate in their mindless shenanigans. I’ve seen one baby start crying, setting off a chain reaction amongst the other babies, and Chilkat just looks around at them like they’re boring simpletons.

Chilkat is sleeping better than ever. She’s a champ. She seems to come home from day care exhausted. Yesterday, we put her to bed an hour early in a very exciting fashion: she fell asleep on KrisDi on the couch downstairs, we transferred her to me, I carried her upstairs, and put her down in the crib. She didn’t even stir. First time we’ve succeeded in such a hand-off, let alone an upstairs traversal without a long cool-down period. To top that off, we had to wake her up in the morning to feed her before day care, she fell asleep during her breakfast, she slept through me putting her into the car seat, the drive to work, and the bumpy walk up the stairs to day care. Then she woke up. Chilkat’s going to be late for school a lot.

She has rolled over twice now during separate tummy times. She gets frustrated less quickly by tummy time. She has not yet gotten on all fours. She likes the sit-up game: lie her on her back and pull her into a sitting position by her hands. Sometimes, rather than grabbing her hands, she’ll grab your fingers. She often likes to continue into the standing position. She also likes the pushy game: put her in a sitting position leaning against you and push against her feet so she can push back.

Chilkat and KrisDi are napping cutely on the other couch. I’m drinking beer and watching the Sox. Currently, they’re winning. It’s a nice change of pace.

Chilkat seems fine with day care. I’m not sure she realizes her parents aren’t around, except that she doesn’t get constant personalized attention. She has a boyfriend named Mads (not a made up name, that’s actually the kid’s name) whom she ignores vigorously. It seems that the day care people feed her mechanically, regardless of whether she’s hungry or how hungry she is; she will eat four ounces every three hours (or sooner if she’s fussy). This is not terrible, I suppose, but I wish KrisDi could be at home to take care of Chilkat and KrisDi could be at work to retrieve the bacon. Chilkat is generally nonplussed to see me when I visit at lunch. We’ll see how things go. I’m told that when the kids are old enough to know a little bit about what’s going on, they think it’s time to go home when one of the parents visit.

Chilkat has been baptized and/or christened. It wasn’t a major ordeal or anything. We’re still eating the leftovers.

We went to the Seattle aquarium with the family that gave me the False Alarm. Their daughter, M, is three weeks older than Chilkat.

It also means I don’t have the morning “put down” — I’ll get up, get ready for work, feed her, and put her in the car seat instead of putting her to bed. This will save me some time in my morning routine. She’ll start learning Butch Walker, Radiohead, Beulah, Cake…and the terrible things I say to and about other drivers. God damn Seattle drivers.

KrisDi will also have to go to work, but it looks like she’ll be able to spend Fridays at home — every other one as an off day, the other ones as “work from home” days, which is great.

For the last two weeks or so, Chilkat’s been primarily nursing, eating from bottles secondarily.

Last Friday, Chilkat discovered her tongue. She moves it around, sticks it out, pulls in it, licks things. She’s grabbing things more now. Yesterday when we went out for pho, she held onto a chopstick and waved it around until she hit herself in the head and KrisDi took it away. Yesterday, she might have let one a single solitary giggle for the first time. Today she might have let out two.

We took her to two White Sox at Mariners games last weekend (we won both!). She was surprisingly good — she didn’t fuss much, KrisDi fed her under the Hooter Hider, and no big issues. It was a lot of fun. I actually got a little sunburnt on Sunday.

Mother’s Day was pretty low key. Chilkat and I got KrisDi a laptop (which covers Mother’s Day, anniversary, and birthday for both of us) to replace the one that was cheap six years ago and has recently started shutting itself down randomly while in use. I could probably get it going reliably again, but I felt it wasn’t a worthwhile effort to try and get a few more months out of it. She likes Windows 7’s “sticky note” functionality. I think she likes the present. It’s something she typically uses every day. We also went out for breakfast, where the waitress fell in love with Chilkat and kept coming back to ogle and poke and compliment (and fill my coffee mug). She says Chilkat looks like the Gerber baby (not the first time we’ve heard that).

We had a baby shower at my work today. They gave Chilkat a tasty cake, a stuffed white bear, an Amazon gift card, and a half hour of crowd admiration. This is what she loves.

Speaking of which, Chilkat is a narcissist. There has been a couple occasions now when she started crying, and calmed down when we put her in front of a screensaver playing pictures of her, and then started cooing and smiling at the pictures.

Speaking of cooing, she “talks” a lot now. Especially in the car. It’s pretty cute when she’s not angry.

Today, not so many pictures. I was very selective. You should be proud of me:

Chilkat still loves her owls. She also loves Sue (she likes to hug and kiss her). She’ll occasionally tolerate Apple Bear. Her third favorite thing (behind Mom and milk) appears to be ‘flying’.

She’s been ‘talking’ a lot more lately. She’s moan and coo and squeal without actually crying, which is pretty cool. KrisDi thinks she’s trying to say “owl.” She’s starting to grab things. She continues to try to stand, and seems to be getting better at balancing (as in, wobbling less dramatically), although she still can’t reliably roll over. She still tries to crawl by pushing her face across the carpet.

She still won’t take a pacifier, but she will suck endlessly on a parent’s finger. We haven’t tried giving her a strangers finger. We’ve considered buying a mannequin hand, and we’ve considered having a silicone cast of a finger made, but we haven’t gone that far yet.

Easter happened. It was relatively quiet and relaxing, very tasty. P Dubs baked the whole day so I could take a couple loaves of Poppyseed Cake to work for our “International Potluck”. I also made Les fly in six dozen pierogi, which I buttered and fried up on a griddle at work right before the pot luck started. That makes a good entry for the company recipe book:

Buy some pierogi in Chicago

Fly it home

Butter it and put it on a griddle

Eat

Chilkat got her two month immunizations yesterday, so she was a little crankier than normal, and a little tired, and her thighs looked a bit swollen. But overall, she seems like she’s in a pretty good mood. The bandaids on her thighs look ridiculous.

She weighed in at 11lb 2.5oz, 23 1/2 inches, 15 inch head circumference. Which I think makes her a little above average in height, a little below average in height (I think she’s in the 5th percentile for her weight to height ratio — she’s very tall and skinny, apparently). Her head circumference is something like the 10th percentile. I’m sure KrisDi will correct me, since I’m just pulling this up from memory.

Here’s the most exciting thing: Basically, she’s slept through the last four nights. Last Tuesday night (April 26) was the first time she ever slept a solid eight hours. I didn’t capitalize on it — I stayed up a little later watching the exciting but disappointing end of game 7 of the Canucks-Blackhawks series, and I woke up at four expecting her to be hungry, but she was just sleeping noisily.

Mom’s here now soaking up baby time with Chilkat. We just ate cheap tacos. She says “Hi” to all my readers out there (so she’s talking to herself).